


Prior to Now

by flamboyantsandwich



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, I'm not even sure what to classify this as?, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Physical Abuse, Slow Build, but there will be sarcasm and sass, disenchanted!Jean, pills n potions plays softly in the background
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 03:39:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1883949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamboyantsandwich/pseuds/flamboyantsandwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Kirschtein never truly forgot Marco Bodt. Even as he watched the life he'd settled so comfortably into crumble to dust around him, even after his ill-fated relationship with his so-called girlfriend turns abusive, and even after he became so disenchanted with life he feels less human with each day; Jean never forgot Marco.</p><p>Now that he’s in college, Jean takes little interest in the humdrum of his everyday life. Utterly bored and stuck in a cycle of fulfilling nothing more than basic needs and completing coursework, Jean desperately craves something to break the painfully mundane routine. But life has strange ways of spicing things up. With the unexpected appearance of familiar freckles and a smile that sets his heart into overdrive, feelings buried long ago are unearthed in a collision of optimism and cynicism. After all, apathy doesn’t look good on anybody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prior to Now

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of ideas, (most of which come to me when I'm shampooing my hair) in the form of plot bunnies. This just happened to be one of the better ones that keeps me awake at night. Anne, dear, this is also for you because I am a terrible person and find I dislike other writing I start. Please also take note this is only a preface, hence the limited length. Chapter two will technically be chapter one as far as the story-line goes.

This time two years ago, my life was roughly six hundred percent more livable. It’s kind of astonishing, really, how quickly things can just change as time passes. It’s more than just _kind of_ astonishing to watch as your life changes, and you realize just how little control you have over anything in your life but yourself. Coming from somebody with deep French roots, I think it’s acceptable at this point for me to just shrug and say c’est la vie.

I guess the worst of things formally started after Marco just disappeared from my life. Given I needed to pinpoint the start of the snowball effect, it’d be that major heartbreak without a doubt in my mind. Compared to what my existence has devolved into now, it’s a safe bet to say that before then, my life was pretty damn exceptional and I was genuinely happy.

The snowball was created during the summer just before my senior year of high school, which ironically enough started off better than any thus far. For starters, I used to actually believe I was some exemplary hotshot with my future all planned out, and as soon as I graduated I could dive headfirst into a perfectly sound, high quality life. I was convinced that I going to join the military as an MP in the reserves to follow in my father’s footsteps- something that made both my parents proud though displeased me because my passion resided in my art -and live a cushy life with a steady job. And because I didn’t really have to waste time worrying myself half to death with ‘needless’ college applications, I had plenty of time to focus most of my attention on my boyfriend, Marco.

At first glance, Marco was one of those kids you just love to hate because there is actually nothing to hate about them. He was bubbly, teeming with well-respected ideas, and an excellent judge of character. Marco could see potential in the most subpar individuals who were otherwise an eyesore for anybody looking at just the cosmetics of the person. He wasn’t exactly a people pleaser, just a really genuine person.

Marco belonged to National Honor Society, was ranked seventh out of one hundred and four students in our graduating class, and had never once been recorded to say anything but positive words about each person he encountered. Even when Annie Leonhardt who was supposedly the coldest person to ever walk the halls of Trost High School straight up insulted him by calling him a ‘needledick pretty boy who only worked to please his daddy’ before storming off, Marco never said a single negative thing about her.

That little incident had happened when we were all first years, before Marco and I were an ‘item’, and back when I was always chomping at the bit for an excuse to throw a punch. I very gladly offered to take Annie down for Marco’s sake- which in retrospect probably would’ve landed me in the hospital, not that I knew it at the time- but he was adamant we be nice to her. All of our little group, including Connie Springer, his girlfriend Sasha Braus, Thomas Wagner, Mina Carolina, and myself were all dumbfounded that he wasn’t angry or seemingly the least bit offended. I could see the wheels turning in his head, and whatever he was thinking was something based on good intentions.

Marco was absent from our lunch table the following day, only to turn up on the opposite side of the cafeteria sitting at Annie’s claimed table; which was typically desolate of anything but that blonde terror and her literal black cloud. The hopeless kid brought her a bagged lunch, spent the whole period just sitting there, and I presumed he was listening to Annie speak, indicated by the very subtle movements of her lips occasionally seen when she moved her hair.

When I met with Marco at the end of the next period, I asked him what Annie was saying, but he was tightlipped and preached to me about minding my own business. When I asked him later why he’d been nice to her after she had been a bitch to him, Marco simply smiled that stupid knowing smile and said, “She’s got a heavy heart, and sometimes people with heavy hearts need to displace feelings when nobody listens.” It made no sense to me at the time, but I accepted it without further question when I knew he wasn’t going to give me anything else on the subject.

As it came to be later found out, Annie lived with an incredibly abusive father, which led her to become hostile and aloof towards everybody in what could be assumed to be fear of more pain. Marco’s comment about heavy hearts made sense to me now in a flash of realization, and whatever he’d said or done for Annie in the time from her insult to the end of our first year seemed to have a profound effect on her. By the beginning of our second year, Annie was suddenly tailed by two of the best football players we had, Reiner Braun and Bertolt Hoover, and her demeanor changed from frighteningly volatile to almost peacefully resolute at their subtle comradery. Marco was a miracle worker by all standards of the word if he could get Annie to be any kind of social with intentions that weren’t meant to disembowel. Although, no one never really saw him speak to Annie again, they did occasionally exchange looks in passing that could be read as mutual understanding.

But Annie was only the tip of the iceberg. Marco helped anybody who showed even the mildest signs of distress, and he probably helped more kids through their struggles than the school counselor did. And that was exactly the reason I fell in love with him. Maybe my feelings weren’t based on the whole, ‘let me drop everything I’m doing and help you because I’m just selfless like that’ aspect, but the fact that Marco was just so unfailingly perfect in everything he did. Call it being blinded by teenage feelings, but it was impossible for me to find any flaws in him. I’d never really seen him upset over anything trivial that fell under the category of high school drama, and I’d never seen him angry; aside from that one time he sort of yelled at me for starting shit with Eren Jaeger. But to justify my actions, Eren was being a dick and totally deserved that bloody lip. I loved Marco, but sometimes the defense of my pride came first.

Even so, Marco and I weren’t together, officially, until our second year. How we managed to get to that point was through natural developments forged from ten years of a steadfast friendship. We had met in preschool, and by some miracle managed to stay joined at the hip all the way through the crayon-stealing in elementary school, the trials of middle school, and finally into high school.

Marco wasn’t my first kiss- that titled had been claimed years before by Eren’s adopted sister Mikasa in fourth grade on the playground when I’d fallen on the woodchips and cried -but he was the first to teach me what it meant to get my knees dirty. In eighth grade, we’d fooled around some, but that was back when neither of us really wanted nor understood the dynamics of a serious relationship. We were stupid kids just trying to learn about the birds and the bees without the explanation of an adult; exploring and experimenting with our own sexualities through inexperienced kissing and halting strokes across faces and the seats of jeans just verging on being floods as a result of surprise growth spurts. Back in time when saying the word penis was still funny, and it struck the pure awkwardness of adolescence right into the heart of the unfortunate soul who said it, was the time when I knew deep in myself that what I felt for Marco was more than just an innocent friendship. I knew that wanting to kiss your best friend for reasons besides curiosity wasn’t exactly…normal.

These feelings were allowed to fester and grow like bacteria in an open wound because almost every weekend from the time we could pronounce each other’s names properly until That Day, Marco and I traded off spending nights at one another’s houses. As we grew into our bodies through the discomfort of puberty, time was spent playing video games, avoiding sleep with sugar and caffeine, and talking things out in an intimate setting that was constructed solely for us and never once seen by anybody else. Early in our second year, I remember lounging across Marco’s lap as we worked together in flawless cooperation to obliterate the zombified population from behind game controllers with an overflow of room temperature cola and a tub of cheese puffs sustaining us. I don’t know how the conversation had even gotten started, but it ended with the game being paused and disremembered, my face stained vermillion in my shame. I’d tried to play it off like nothing, but when you casually admit to your best friend that you’ve had questionable feelings for him since the seventh grade, said best friend will suddenly find your battle against the undead to be of the least concern.

Even as stupid and meaningless as it is now, to this day I still thank my lucky stars that I didn’t lose even half as much as I had gained with that single confession alone. By the end of that night, through a series of awkward admittances and uncomfortable shifting as the truth spilled from my mouth like a dam had broken, Marco had officially become my boyfriend. Neither of us asked the question formally, it was an agreement sealed by the touching of foreheads and nervous smiles gracing both our mouths, accompanied by Marco’s soft voice whispering against the heavy atmosphere, “I like you too, Jean.” Sealed with a shaky kiss, from that point on my life reached gold star status for a time, and I was happier than a baby in a barrel of titties.

The rest of our second year and the following third year went by smoothly enough, although we had a few rough patches when I busted a few lips and bloodied my knuckles in retaliation against some assholes who felt the need to call Marco and I some pretty unsavory things just because we were holding hands in the hallway. Still, those people were miniscule pests easily dealt with in the grand scheme of things, and the closer senior year was fast approaching, the less I cared about anything that didn’t directly affect Marco and/or my future. Around the middle of the third year was when I admitted to Marco I really didn’t want my future to be with the MPs, but rather I wanted to be an art major, and the only reason why I wasn’t going to college to major in art was to make my parents proud. A little self-evaluation was much needed, and at sixteen I was thinking just a little too hard about my future than I ever thought I would.

When talking about the future, Marco excitedly told me that he was going to join the infantry branch of the military because he had always wanted the honour of serving and defending his country. I told him to follow his dreams- even if the thought of him being deployed and not returning frightened me more than I’d openly admit -because I knew Marco. I knew that when he talked about honour, he reverted back to being a bright-eyed kid with big dreams and his heart of gold still full to the brim with pure intentions.

Before our third year had ended, we really had talked almost endlessly about the future and what life after high school would be like because time was just flying by, and the issue was becoming more pressing day by day. We continued our little tradition of spending weekends with one another, and this is when Marco and I began to whisper to one another in the dark like we had used to as sleepless children, but things were just a little different in way of sleeping arrangements this time around. We would curl around each other’s frames- Marco’s physique just a bit taller and defined than my own -lying on our sides, an undefined mass of teenage boys enveloped in the stygian night. Every weekend we’d spend, at the very least, two hours lying together and just talking until sleep set in and we’d clock out in each other’s arms.  

Unsurprisingly enough, the first time that Marco told me he loved me was during one of our talks beneath the comforting blanket of obsidian darkness. My heart leapt into my throat at those three little words that meant just so much, and I knew right then and there that I wanted to spend my life with him, no matter where our separate aspirations led us. The time we spent lying beneath the covers in a tangle of limbs, of snarled blankets and cowlicks splayed wildly as bedhead, was what I lived for. That is, until the end of our third year when summer came, and with it brought along That Day.

That Day, as I call it, was the worst day of my life thus far when I felt something deep inside of me crack open and trickle something cold into the pit of my stomach, something cold that left a metallic taste in my mouth, and dulled the rest of my senses. Since That Day, that same cold has morphed into what I’ve aptly defined as apathy; of which has been slowly leaking into my bloodstream and poisoning me to the disenchanted shit I am today.

That Day started off as a scorcher and boiled down to an uncomfortably muggy evening, late June, about a week after Marco’s seventeenth birthday. We were in my bed, a tangle of lanky limbs that made figuring out where Marco’s body began and mine ended near impossible, the silence all but radiating off of Marco pricking the moisture heavy atmosphere with a painful tension. I’d listened to him take a deep breath in as if he were about to speak, but then he’d turn around and exhale what he was going to say in a sigh. This happened at least six times before I broke the silence by softly murmuring his name to get his attention and let him know I was open to listen to whatever it was he was trying to say.

Before I could even register what was happening, Marco had me on my back, pinned flush to the squeaky mattress as his mouth assaulted mine in a furious desperation I’d never once experienced from any of the hundreds of kisses we’d shared. Marco begged me to make love to him once he pulled away from the kiss for a breath- a strange concept when teenage boys are involved –but I told him the circumstances weren’t appropriate; even if I wanted to finally orgasm from stimulation caused by something other than my hand. My obnoxiously homophobic parents were sleeping in the room right across the hall, my mattress squeaked if you so much as took too deep a breath when lying on it, and I while I wasn’t experienced, I wasn’t naïve on what items were needed to ensure I didn’t tear Marco from the inside out. As much as I wanted to do more with Marco than our usual blow or hand job, now just wasn’t the time.

We’d talked about going ‘all the way’ before, but had never really had an opportunity to do so due to how enormously unprepared both of us were. Marco surprised me with such a sudden want for sex, but not sex that was anywhere near meaningless based on his words, and I had to ask him why the abrupt need to beg me for such a thing.

And that’s really what started it all. What Marco told me was the reason That Day exists in my life.

That Day is the reason I am this way now.

**Author's Note:**

> How this idea even came to me? Who knows at this point. Maybe it was my desire to write something with a slow-build for once in my life. Maybe it's a bit of my own disenchantment with life seeping into Jean. Or maybe I'm just too tired to even try to come up with the birthplace of the idea. 
> 
> Still, I'm kind of excited for this. I know where things are headed from now until pretty far into the future of the story. I just hope I can characterize Jean correctly, as far as the standards of being an AU go. I sense a lot of cynicism from him, which I can most definitely use to my own advantage. Hitch has none of my love for her character as far as both the manga/anime go, but I didn't write this as a justified character hate. I just like watching catty women beat an unhappy Jean up. 
> 
> Any feedback is enormously appreciated with thanks from my heart. Feel free to point out typos and the lot. I write at godforsaken hours of the morning when my brain's optimal functioning is questionable.


End file.
